Chapter 13
Serving the Vampyren military commanders wasn't that much different than serving businessmen back when she'd been a waitress, long before she and Candy had decided to join up with Accelerate and learned that the money was great even if the annoyance factor was higher.
Mindy had a theory that the bureaucratic mentality was the same throughout the Universe. The fact that less than a year earlier no one had known there were other races in the Universe made no difference: There were insufferable blowhards in every race.
There was also a need for coffee. Best guess, it didn't exist on whatever their planet was, because the Vampyren acted like newly minted alcoholics, kind of violently vying to be the next to get their cups under her coffee pot.
The fact that a coffee maker that was refreshed frequently and self serve would make more sense didn't occur to them. They were Vampyren. Women were supposed to serve them.
So was everyone who wasn't Vampyren and a good many who were on down the hierarchy.
As a whole, she didn't like them much.
But suggesting they change over to a self-serve coffee maker would be a terrible idea. First because it would make whoever she suggested it to fly into a rage. That went without saying.
Second, because she was learning stuff. The first few days after Candy was taken and she'd asked for the job of serving, they didn't particularly treat her with kid gloves.
They just treated her as someone who it was their right to have caring for them at the same time she was the reason they couldn't speak freely, even in their own tongue, and apparently they resented that. It was an interesting mix of things.
After a couple weeks, as October took hold more firmly out in the world beyond the hotel, they got used to her.
And then they forgot her.
She shared her information with Shauna, but no one else, and only after Shauna had watched Cindie Gee walking away once and volunteered without prompting, "Whatever you do, don't trust her. She's not playing for our team."
Even though Mindy had known exactly who she was talking about she'd learned around her and peered down the hall as if making certain who Cindie was.
The girl had chestnut hair that looked like it came out of a box marked Chestnut and a blue streak in the front that was fading so every day she seemed to be aging faster than she should.
Her roots weren't showing, though – daily trips to the spa saw to that.
"Whose team is she playing for?" she'd wondered and when Shauna said, "Hers," decided she might be able to trust the Southern belle.
She missed Candy more every day.
She especially missed her today. Because the conference room was a hub of violent talk and more violent action. Where the bureaucratic mentality fell apart was that the males arguing were still Vampyren. They were armed, they were enormous, they were dangerous and they shouted a lot.
They were shouting when she entered and they were still shouting when she eventually left.
She'd have been shouting too.
The Lucian were coming. No one answered direct questions for the harem girls but what they'd pieced together was that the Lucian were as close to werewolves of Earth mythology as to make no difference.
As huge as the Vampyren, they were animalistic, deadly, fast, hairy and always, always sexually aroused.
The Vampyren had lost women to them and that sounded tricky because Vampyren women were nothing to mess with.
The Lucian could mate with their own kind, so there were a lot fuller breeds than the Vampyren who increased their numbers by having children with humans and then treating them as mostly Vampyren – unless they didn't. The more violent and dangerous the child, the more the father assumed his spark had been what took hold.
The Lucian, apparently, just fucked. A lot. And their women caught pregnant. A lot. Now they were coming, the male warriors of their kind.
Now, she thought the males in the meeting were pretty sure the Lucian were already here.
On Earth.
What that meant for the Vampyren was there were battles coming up and the soldiers would be marching and training and having access to the harem to blow off steam (at least she thought that was what they'd said, it was half in Vampyren and she understood only some words of that) and what it meant for the humans was –
Death.
Lucian didn't colonize. They overtook. They overthrew. They killed, slaughtered and ate their way through planets unless there was something desirable about the planet.
Earth might be something they wanted. If only because the Vampyren were here and they wanted it.
Or it might not.
Either way, she thought she was one of the few humans in the world who had this information and she burned with fear as she hurried back to her room.
Tell Shauna?
Tell a non-existent Candy for the purpose of talking it through by herself? She still talked to Candy. But she and Candy had never faced anything like this.
Find Alek?
But the call came for her to go right back to the meeting before she'd gotten very far. They needed a server for the dinner portion and the usual girl had taken ill or pregnant or been drained, the coach telling her to go didn't know and didn't care.
Neither did Mindy.
She just wanted whatever information she could gather.
"Northwest by the airport. Not all of them. But it is going to be – "
"Twenty-five men and the machines, we need to send backup – "
"You're wrong, the Lucian would never accept – "
"Send one of the harem, they can't resist, they'd lose face – "
"Girl has to volunteer --?"
"Who gives a – " and there the speaker, one of the coarser and heavily bearded, heavily muscled Vampyren used their equivalent of fuck.
Of course they didn't care. The girl would be a human, or a fallen from grace Vampyren female, and the trip was one-way. Suicide. She'd go in with the vampire equivalent of a wire and get information.
Whoever she was, she'd go in as a spy.
She shivered and tried to turn invisible as she served.
"You! Girl!"
Mindy jerked her head around. What she'd wanted was a head's up, an idea what was coming their way, because no one in the Vampyren camp was going to worry about warning the harem before an attack by the planet killer Lucians.
What she hadn't wanted was –
"Her. She works. Send her. She's good at serving and you know she's been fucked."
Fuck you, Mindy thought, schooling her face to look bland.
It had been five months since the invaders came to Earth, and two since she'd been brought here. She was toned, buff, stronger, thinner, and her hair and nails were more perfect than even Accelerate had demanded.
That was supposed to make her desirable to the vampires whether she wanted it or not.
It wasn't supposed to make her werewolf bait.
It was all she could do not to run.
"Decide on that later," one of the males said. He was taller than the others, imposing as Pan but it wasn't Pan. These were the rulers, minor royalty who ran the militia.
They were the ones deciding her fate.
In the next second, it wasn't just hers.
"Send her? She's Alek's whore."
"Who?" another voice asked, sounding pettier than unknowing.
"Pan's brother."
"Why would I accede to his wishes?"
"He's a commander."
"And I'm his lord and master."
"But the girl – "
"Doesn't matter!" The speaker was on his feet, all eight foot something of him, rippling muscle under the vest he wore, black hair plaited, but he was older, she thought.
Vampyren lived for centuries, that's what lore said, and one of the reasons they crushed out other lives so easily.
They overbreed their planets and then they'd go looking to take more.
They liked to breed and then had the problems of the older generations not even slowing down, let alone dying off as the younger ones grew.
This guy – she wondered how many centuries old he was.
He'd had enough time to thoroughly develop his hatefulness. He moved at her then, caught her chin in his hand, and yanked her head around so she faced the other Vampyren at the table. "It won't matter what Alek Tybolt wants."
He had known the name. She'd gotten stuck in the middle of a power grab and all because she wanted information. He thrust her away from him.
"Because we're sending his unit to clean out the North."
There were arguments then, most of them in Vampyren, but enough of them in the version of English they used that she understood.
They were sending Alek's unit into their own suicide mission. Without warning. They were, basically, sending them to be slaughtered and if they took out some of the Lucian before that happened, so much the better.
She backed toward the door. As long as she'd been here, she'd never seen more than the conference rooms, the harem floors, the spa and the roof. She had no idea where Alek quartered. Every time they'd been together had been in her suite.
But she had to find him.
The males at the table were close to coming to blows. They were shouting and arguing policy, warfare, and what the team sent to clean out part of the city needed to know.
If she could get to Alek, he could mobilize his team against these Vampyren. Against his own kind, yes, but there was no other choice.
She backed up another two feet.
And collided with the serving tray.
A roomful of Vampyren elders turned and looked at her and now they were united. Their faces, as one, spelled their decision.
She turned to run.
She didn't even make it to the door.